Posts tagged ‘Ruby Wedding’
Finished! Spumoni Spring
I WANT TO TOUCH ALL YOUR FABRIC
Five quilts down, one to go:
“Spumoni Spring” 2012, 72″ x 72″
I have submitted my entry forms for the guild quilt show, now only a month away, and I am entering six quilts: Welcome Ronan, AKA Ronan’s Quilt; The Very Hungry Caterpillar; Dragons Galore, AKA Minkee Dragons; Halloween Buzz Saw; Spumoni Spring, AKA Pink and Brown; and the shop hop sampler quilt. That final one is still on the sewing table, still being quilted. BUT! It’s mostly complete, I know what I’m doing with the rest of it, and I already have the binding made. AND! The other five are completely finished, including hanging sleeves. I think that’s a personal best; I’m usually sewing on hanging sleeves into the wee hours of Wednesday morning before the show, when we have to bring our quilts to the fairgrounds.
So, back to Spumoni Spring. The title presented itself once I added that green:
Block detail, “Spumoni Spring”
The blocks are quilted in a Pam Clarke-inspired design, for which I used her Basic 8 stencil and a blue chalk pounce to just give me some temporary guidelines to work with. This was a really satisfying technique: no blue marker to wash out, but definitely more consistent results than I can achieve by just eyeballing it. The blue chalk was highly visible on all my fabrics, but it brushes off very quickly, so I couldn’t mark more than one block at a time. I was also trying to use as few thread starts and stops as possible. Therefore, as I prepared to enter each block, I had to use my big 16 1/2″ square plexiglass ruler as a table to slide under the quilt and give me a surface on which to mark my blue chalk asterisk. Not the most graceful technique in the world, but I’m not arguing with the finished product.
Border quilting detail, Spumoni Spring
The two center vertical strippy borders were such a busy print that I knew nothing would show up, so I just echoed the print to create the appropriate quilting density. The two outer vertical strippy borders were not quite as busy, but with that large floral, I still didn’t want to exert myself particularly; if I’m going to do something fancy, I want to be able to see it! Therefore, I selected a design I’d been meaning to try: Onions and Garlic from Megan Best’s “Spinal Twist” book. It’s simple but creates a beautiful texture, which (like many of my favorite freehand designs) benefits from being somewhat imprecise. This is one I will definitely use again.
The outermost pinwheel border was the area I selected to get the least dense quilting design. I’ve mentioned before how I like Sue Patten‘s principle that a quilt should have three densities of quilting to create depth and contrast, the same way the top should have three values of fabric. Since this is definitely a lap/cuddle quilt, rather than a wall quilt, I thought having a nice soft poofy border where your face would go might work out well. We’ll see, because currently I feel like it needs something more. Oh well, it’s a learning experience! I just did a looping continuous curve variation, following the seam lines as if they were hourglass blocks:
Feather quilting detail, Spumoni Spring
In contrast, the densest quilting was in the green border, where I did one of Patsy Thompson‘s feather wave borders. I broke down and mail-ordered the 40″ flexible curve ruler, which made marking the spine VERY easy. I used a variegated pink thread from Fil-Tec that behaved beautifully; I will definitely be exploring more of their threads.
Label detail, Spumoni Spring
The binding seemed to need to be green as well, and I used a spare pinwheel block as the label. And after five years in the UFO box, it’s finished! It feels so good to be racking up a list of these. Of course, the next “Finished!” post will be about a new (though small) project that I’m taking to Show & Tell at guild tonight, and I’m already mentally making my challenge quilt for next fall, so the UFO completion rate will probably slip a bit in the near future. But at the same time, the confidence I’ve built over the last several projects is really encouraging me to take a deep breath and quilt Ruby Wedding. Now THAT would alleviate some quilt guilt and free up some brainspace!
This quilt’s happy dance really couldn’t be to any other song, and Gerard Darmon’s version of it for this video made me smile:
Finished! Matt and Alyssa’s Wedding Quilt
The baby’s asleep — I can get a post up here!
You know what they say about good intentions… and what they’re used to pave…
When my friend Alyssa asked me, roughly a month before her November 2009 wedding, if I knew anyone who’d be willing to make a wedding signature quilt for hire, I jumped at the opportunity: ”Let me do this as my wedding present to you.” I was very sincere in this. Despite having already planned for 2010 to be my Year of the UFO, I thought this project would make a worthy exception. I love signature/album quilts; they’re such a wonderful tradition, and speak to me so volubly of Why We Quilt — they are literally a way for the recipients to wrap themselves in the good wishes of people who care about them. Besides, it was going to be a simple quilt: big blocks, straight-line piecing, nothing fancy. This wouldn’t take much time.
Ha. Ha. Ha. Because this became Murphy’s Quilt.
Everything started well: I prepared a basketful of precut 4 1/2″ squares of the JoAnn Fabrics Kona cotton in a nice cream, prewashed and ironed onto freezer paper, with a 1/2″ seam allowance premarked with blue washout marker. (I figured, mostly correctly, that a marked 1/2″ seam allowance would probably yield a useably empty 1/4″ seam allowance.) As their wedding colors were dark blue and chocolate brown, I brought along fine-tip Sharpies in navy and brown, which I had pretested for colorfastness. Dan made a nice sign for the table at the reception, explaining the project, and the guests did a nice job leaving signatures, notes, wishes, and even some artwork on the squares.
I had planned the quilt to encompass 25 Air Castle blocks, measuring 12″ each, as I wanted it to be big enough for them to share as a couch/cuddle quilt. I chose the Air Castle block because it’s simple, attractive, and contains 5 solid squares; thus the quilt could accommodate up to 125 signed squares. Projected attendance was roughly 100, and I made sure I had plenty of extra squares available to allow for mistakes, but as most couples and families signed just one square to represent them all, and some guests didn’t sign at all, I ended up with only 39 signed squares. This was fine; it meant that I could put a signed square in the center of each block, with a second one in the lower right hand corner of slightly more than half the blocks. It also gave me room to make an additional square to place in the center of the quilt with their names, wedding date, and details.
I had warned Alyssa when I offered to take this project on that it wouldn’t be finished anytime soon; there was no way I could start it before the new year, and she was fine with that. I was able to pull all the necessary brown fabrics from the leftovers from Window on Whimsey, but the not-quite-navy of the bridesmaids’ dresses wasn’t really represented in my stash, so it gave me something to look for on the Shop Hop last year. I then bundled up the fabrics, the sketch, my copy of Marsha McCloskey’s Block Party book, and set them aside. And then my life got complicated. I started this blog; I found out I was pregnant; three weeks later, I found out I was losing my job; and two months after that, I lost said job. Then I started traveling so I could work for the military dental contractor, and next thing I knew, it was the middle of summer and I hadn’t yet started this quilt. (Hello, quilt guilt!) I had taken the supplies to the April guild retreat, but didn’t actually work on it. In fact, I didn’t start the quilt until the weekend before my mini home retreat with Rhonda and Diane; I had started the cutting at my parents’ house during a quilting day with my mom, thinking I’d be able to knock out the whole top the following weekend.
Again: Ha. Ha. Ha.
As regular readers may recall, that was when I mistakenly cut a large portion of my fabric into the wrong size triangles, having forgotten in the criminally long interval between planning and starting that I had changed the block size from the 9″ in the book to 12″. And I couldn’t just change my mind and make either more blocks or a smaller quilt, because the signed squares were 4 1/2″ and could not be cut down. All I could do was get over myself and recut the pieces. Fortunately, I had enough of the brown and blue fabrics, and the cream was a standard solid from JoAnn’s, easy to procure more of, right? Right???
The first time I looked for more of the solid cream fabric was when my mom and I were in Pittsburgh to hear Bonnie Hunter speak, and we stopped into a local JoAnn’s to kill time before the meeting. I couldn’t find anything that looked like what I’d been working with, but I didn’t have a swatch with me for comparison so I didn’t worry. I started to worry, however, when I did take a swatch to my local JoAnn’s and still couldn’t find anything that matched. I remembered having bought Kona cotton, but I started to second-guess myself and looked at all their solids. Still nothing. Could they have discontinued an entire line of solids between November and July? Could there be a missing off-white that no one was stocking? I was really puzzled. I finally bought a yard each of the two closest matches, the Kona cotton and the Egyptian cotton, hoping that one or the other would look significantly different once it was washed.
And surprise, it did! Turns out, both fabrics apparently have so much sizing and finishing additives on them that they radically changed in appearance once they were washed and dried, and the Kona cotton was indeed the winner as I had remembered. Washed, it looked lighter in color, much more matte, and with nearly a seersucker texture even after pressing. If I needed a reminder of the importance of prewashing, this was it. Another obstacle surmounted.
I finished the top and also pieced the back. I’d found on last year’s shop hop not only a beautiful blue and brown large-scale Oriental floral perfect for this purpose on the bargain rack, but also a piece of Gail Kessler‘s life-size piano keyboard fabric, which I thought would be very appropriate to incorporate into a pianist’s quilt. It made the construction of the back somewhat more challenging, but I think it was worth it:
I then basted the quilt and started quilting. And that’s when the final round of Murphyness raised its ugly head. As previously discussed here, I had unprecedented problems with skipped stitches and frayed threads, especially every time I crossed a heavy intersection of seam allowances. In a pieced quilt, there are a lot of these, and it made me nervous about my prospects for quilting both Ruby Wedding and Taupe Winding Ways. Manipulating tension and needle choice solved most of the problem, but I still had to periodically stop, rip out, and restitch throughout the project, which really ruined my momentum and greatly prolonged the process. I was happy with my choice of quilting design, though: a virtually no-mark, Pam Clarke-inspired combination of continuous curve quilting in the blue and brown triangles and in the signature squares, with additional loop and curl embellishments in the solid cream squares and triangles. The light blue thread created enough contrast for visibility without distracting from the primary focus of the top. I finished the quilt with a scrappy binding of all the blues, once again using the Sew Precise, Sew Fast machine binding technique.
If this were a fictional story, this whole tale of woe would culminate with my putting the finished quilt in the washing machine to remove the washout blue marker and the water-soluble thread, and having all the Sharpie signatures inexplicably vanish off the fabric, thus ruining the entire project. Fortunately, this is real life, and I really had tested the markers first, so there was no final tragedy. I was able to give them their quilt on their first wedding anniversary, and they loved it. Despite all the roadblocks I encountered, I am happy I made this quilt for them, and it certainly was a learning experience! Therefore, I’ll leave this happy dance in the capable hands and feet of Mr. Gene Kelly, who danced happier than anyone:
Gearing up for Quilting with Machines
Turning the calendar page for September always seems to sneak up on me. I’ve been out of school for over a decade now, but the end of summer still carries with it a sigh and a plodding return to a less-fun routine. However, this year it also brings excitement: September is the month I go to Quilting with Machines!
Detail, QwM 2009 teacher quilt exhibit
Diane and I are returning attendees this year, having had an overwhelmingly good time at last year’s event. At first, I was disappointed to learn that the organizers were changing the time and the location for 2010, moving it further west and from October to September, but that was before I knew I’d be in my third trimester of pregnancy in fall 2010. Attending a machine quilting conference six-and-a-half hours away from home is much more doable at 32 weeks than at 36, when I’m no longer supposed to be more than an hour’s drive from the hospital. (I’ve been fortunate to have a very healthy and active pregnancy to this point, so I have no reason to expect drastic change in the next two to three weeks, but obviously I will be sensible and cautious.)
Last year, I didn’t really know what to expect. QwM started as a retreat for an Ohio longarm quilting guild and has grown over the years into a learning event for all forms of machine quilting. However, as a domestic machine quilter, I was concerned. Despite what the mission statement said on the website, what if the classes were far too longarm-specific? What if the teachers looked down on domestic machine quilters? What if I was wasting my time and money? Of course, all I wasted was a lot of worry. Although the teachers were all well-known longarm quilters, the designs, techniques, and thought processes they taught were applicable to any type of machine quilting.
I came back from the conference with my mind just buzzing with new techniques to try. As Sue Patten said in her Freemotion Freehand Possibilities lecture, “If you don’t go home and practice what you’ve learned, next year just mail me a check and stay home.” With that in mind, I’m trying to do as much machine quilting as possible leading up to this year’s event so that I am in the best possible mindset to absorb the information. I’ll be recently familiar with my biggest strengths and weaknesses in machine quilting, and thus be primed to learn, and ask when necessary, how best to overcome them.
To that purpose, I’ve been quilting as many tops as possible from my stash that were ready to quilt. This Noah’s Ark panel was a cheapie from JoAnn’s that I specifically bought because I didn’t care about it: I used it to test my idea for the addition of lattice strips for Window on Whimsey last summer, thinking that if it turned out decently, I’d quilt and donate it. Now that we’re having a baby, I’ll use it as a “tummy time” playmat for him.
In the Quilt Guilt corner, I’ve been holding on to my mom’s Halloween Attic Windows wallhanging forever. We took an Attic Windows class together at Smile Spinners probably 6-7 years ago (I know it was before I bought my Janome, and that was July 2004.) She made this absolutely charming wallhanging, using fabric that reminded us both of the Edward Gorey animation from the opening credits of Mystery! on PBS:
When I came across it in her sewing room a couple of years ago, still an unfinished top, I asked if I could quilt it for her. She agreed, saying, “no hurry.” This is not a good phrase to use on a quilting procrastinator like me. I’ve taken it to at least three guild retreats with the good intention of quilting it, to no avail. At least I made the positive step back in February to order a spool of Superior Threads NiteLite Extra Glow glow-in-the-dark thread to use on it, but it’s only since last weekend that I’ve actually made progress.
Mom's Halloween Attic Windows
Once I’ve got the bindings on, and the label and sleeve on my mom’s quilt, I’ll post some detail pictures of the quilting. I did some playful experimenting on both, and am very happy with the results.
The third project is, of course, Matt and Alyssa’s wedding quilt. I’ve started quilting it and I like the virtually no-mark design I’ve chosen, but I’m having weird thread problems and becoming very frustrated. I’m using Superior Threads Bottom Line in a pale blue in both the top and bobbin, and while it is usually one of my favorites, I’ve been getting unexpected skipped stitches and having the thread “catch” on the needle. (To be fair, since I’ve used this particular cone of thread before without incident, this is more likely a machine problem manifesting due to the fineness of this thread, than an actual thread problem.) Following the advice on Superior’s excellent troubleshooting pages, I’ve mitigated these symptoms by adjusting my bobbin tension (eek!) and going up to a #90 titanium topstitch needle (their thread guide suggests a #70 or #80), as well as running the machine much more slowly than I’m used to, which is playing havoc with my stitch length consistency. It’s improving, but problems like this can drain away one’s motivation, and of course with all the ripping and adjusting, it’s taking forever. I’ll post a picture when it’s finished.
All this quilting, with its attendant ups and downs, will hopefully not only prepare me for Quilting with Machines, but also for quilting Ruby Wedding. I haven’t basted it yet (it’s 90″ square, thus presenting some logistical challenges) but I’ve pieced the back and made the binding, so I’m getting there. I think I’ve even made most of the design decisions for it. At this point, it’s really just a question of confidence: I’m so happy with how the top turned out that I want to make sure my quilting enhances, rather than detracts from, the beauty of the top. Hopefully all this intensive quilting will help build that confidence, because there’s nothing to it but to do it.
A Tale of Two Purses
You know how sometimes, when you need to call or write a friend you’ve been out of touch with for a while, you catch yourself putting it off because there’s so much to say? Yet the longer you put it off, the more there is to cover, and you dig yourself a little deeper.
That’s where I’ve been with this blog. I’ve been back from Arkansas for almost a month, my guild show has come and gone, and each time I think about posting to the blog I think, Oh, but I still haven’t posted about the quilt shop in Arkansas, or the lecture and exhibit I went to at the Allentown Art Museum, or winning my first-ever blue ribbon, or going to New York City…
You see where I’m going with this. I’ve been doing the same thing with the blog lately that I’ve been doing with my UFOs, allowing the accumulated psychological weight of my perceived to-do list to paralyze me into inactivity. So perhaps I need to take a more measured approach to the blog, the way I’ve been attempting to do with the UFOs. Rather than trying to get all caught up, I’ll start with what I’m doing now. If I can manage to go “back in time” and catch up, great; if not, at least I’m not digging myself in deeper. Again.
So! What have I been working on lately? Purses! It most likely started here:
As I’ve doubtless mentioned before, I am totally in thrall to the Japanese quilters. I’m amazed by the idea that a culture with no history of quilting (technically, sashiko isn’t quilting, it’s embroidery to decorate and reinforce a single layer of fabric) and certainly no history of decorative patchwork, a culture which was only exposed to American quilting post-WWII, has managed to produce in just the last 60 years a community of quilters of unparalleled creativity and workmanship. I subscribe to two Japanese quilting magazines, Quilts Japan and Patchwork Quilt Tsushin, and am always happy for opportunities to see Japanese quilts in person. I love the design esthetic: the frequently muted colors (especially taupes!), the artful assymetries, the use of fabric printed with English or French text as purely a textural element much in the same way we use Chinese or Japanese logographic characters for decoration. Here we see the quintessential American craft, that is ours the same way jazz and rock and roll are, reinterpreted through a foreign lens in a breathtakingly beautiful fashion.
So every time I’m in or near New York City, I stop at Kinokuniya bookstore, located right across the street from Bryant Park, where they put on the Fashion Week shows (Hi, Tim Gunn!) and Sanseido bookstore, located in the Mitsuwa marketplace in Edgewater, NJ. There I spend some very happy hours browsing through quilt books that I can’t read, but the photographs are stunning and the directions have very helpful diagrams. Both the books and magazines are for me primarily sources of inspiration, rather than patterns I plan to follow faithfully, but I think I’d do OK once I converted all the measurements from metric to English, if I decided I had to make something exactly the way it appeared. I didn’t plan to just buy purse books, but these were the items that attracted me the most.
Then, hard on the heels of my NYC trip were several family birthdays. One of my sisters, when I asked her what she wanted for her birthday, said, “Oh please, don’t buy me anything.” I decided to honor the letter of the law, rather than the spirit, and made her a purse. Technically, the only thing I bought were the zippers and interfacing. She apparently forgives me this transgression, because she loved the purse:
I am inordinately proud of this zipper.
She and her family are big Star Wars fans, even having attended the Star Wars Celebration in Orlando, so I couldn’t think of a worthier recipient for something made from some of my precious vintage Star Wars fabric. My friend Joan was generous enough to share this with me last month, after I had quite openly coveted it at our guild retreat in December. She had bought the fabric when it was in the stores after Return of the Jedi came out in 1983, held onto it all these years, then made this quilt for her grown son’s “man cave”:
Joan's Star Wars quilt
I wound up quite unexpectedly being asked to hold an impromptu “Introduction to Star Wars” lecture at the retreat, explaining the story to those retreat-goers not familiar with it, based on the images in the quilt. (Fortunately, the regulars were all fully cognizant of what a big giant nerd I am, so I wasn’t outing myself.) It felt pretty much exactly like this:
(I couldn’t find a version of this scene without the added comedy title and subtitles, but you get the idea.)
So the purse is the Huntington Hobo by Pink Sand Beach Designs, and the directions were wonderful. Even the zippers were easy to do with her photos and instructions. The only drawback is that I wish I’d had a better quality zipper for the top opening; the big metal one from JoAnn’s hangs up too much. Hopefully as my sister uses the bag and possibly waxes the zipper, it will work more easily, but overall I have to call this one a great success. Which is good, since another of my sisters has already informed me that I’m permitted to make one, sans Star Wars, for her birthday in November.
Then this past weekend, we attended a birthday party for my 12-year-old niece. I got her a DVD she wanted (Up, probably my favorite Pixar movie yet, which is saying a lot) and some fingernail glitter, but I thought it would be fun to make her a purse as well:
This is Geisha Girl by Purse Strings, and the directions were great right up until it came time to put in the zipper. I’ll definitely make this purse again, and I’ll have to play with the zipper instructions then, but they just weren’t speaking to me this time, so I left the zipper out. But it turned out SOOOO CUTE! She was very happy with it. I wish I could have taken it to show and tell, but I missed my guild meeting last week due to an upset stomach — much as I wanted to share the purse, I didn’t want to risk sharing a nasty GI bug! Fortunately it was of short duration.
The skull fabric is called Skullfinity, by (you guessed it) Alexander Henry. I found this at JoAnn Fabrics of all places a couple years ago and bought 6 1/2 yards out of sheer love. (Yay coupons!) I have a Halloween UFO that this should be the back to.
I spent much of Sunday making the bias binding for Ruby Wedding. My parents’ 41st wedding anniversary was yesterday, and while I’m getting no pressure from them, thank goodness, I’m feeling the guilt considering the quilt is now a full year late. I haven’t basted it yet, but knowing the binding is there waiting for me somehow makes it easier to embark on the huge intimidating project that quilting this quilt represents. That’s what’s next…
QFNJ 2010: Part III, The Shopping
I don’t know if anyone else has this particular hangup, but I feel awkward admitting that the vendors are part of what brings me to the quilt shows. I like to maintain the polite fiction that I’m solely there to admire the quilts, and then oh look, here are some ladies and gentlemen who wish to sell me thread, fabric, and gadgets! Why, it would be rude to decline their offer, would it not? But if I am indeed operating in good faith, I have to say that the vendors factor heavily in my decision to go to shows. I even checked the vendor list on the QFNJ website and made my shopping list accordingly. My list included:
Thread for quilting Ruby Wedding and Convergence Birds
Blue chalk in a pounce pad for marking the stencils for Ruby Wedding
The thimble cage my husband didn’t get me for Christmas
Renae Haddadin’s DVD on quilting circle designs
NO FABRIC!!!
Overall, I did very well. I couldn’t find the Renae Haddadin DVD, but I knew that was a long shot; besides, I want it for an idea I had on how to quilt Taupe Winding Ways. Considering that top is only half-finished, and it’s fourth in the quilting queue behind Convergence Birds, Window on Whimsy, and Ruby Wedding, I’ve got some time.
My first purchases of the show were at the Superior Threads booth. Even though I had just gotten that big shipment from them, $10 clearance cones of BRYTES (the discontinued colors) are hard to pass up. I also found a lovely variegated Rainbows that matches the palette of Convergence Birds uncannily, and the lighter shade of grey-blue King Tut I wanted to complete my armamentarium for quilting Ruby Wedding.
I almost managed to avoid buying fabric, and I only bought a total of a yard, which may be a personal record. Quilt Plus had bins of Japanese fabrics, and it seemed foolish not to buy fat quarters of my two favorites:
I’m a sucker for taupes to begin with, and when they have attractive patterns with not-quite-accurate English translations on them? Tell me how I’m not supposed to buy that. I also bought a pattern for a little coin purse and the metal frame to make one. Connie, the owner, has an offer going where if you bring a purse you made from her patterns and handles to her show booth, she’ll give you a free pattern in return for a photograph of you and your purse for her gallery. I’ve made two of her hobo bags, one for myself and one for Diane’s birthday last year, but I only used Connie’s handles on Diane’s. (Mine has cheap knockoffs from JoAnn’s, shame shame!)
I went through nearly three quarters of the vendor booths before I found someone selling the blue chalk pounce powder — and I bought the last one she had! At her booth, Quilting Connection, I also bought a pre-cut half yard of a batik with a pretty pattern that reminded me of DeLoa Jones’ “Dragon Fire” meander, and that I thought might be adaptable for machine quilting.
So it’s not really like buying fabric; it’s more like buying a quilting pattern and getting a half yard of fabric free with purchase, right? That’s my story, anyway.
I had asked my husband for a thimble cage for Christmas, and he claimed he couldn’t find any for under $150. Google disagrees, but I think he was just afraid to buy the wrong thing for me in an area he knows nothing about, so I’ll give him a break this time. This way, I got to select my own, and the saleswoman at Baskets, Boxes, Things North was even nice enough to size me for a Roxanne thimble she knew she wasn’t going to sell me, just to make certain that my thimble at home would fit comfortably in the cage.
I have to get a chain for it, and the booth owner gave me the tip to put a weighty charm on the ring that keeps the cage closed (she had a little silver turtle on hers), to help prevent the thimble falling out.
My only absolute impulse buy of the show wasn’t even directly quilt-related. I am a sucker for anyone demonstrating a product live and in person, and when that product actually, obviously just works, I find it very hard to resist. Especially when the product is a lint roller that never needs refills, and the customer (me) just took a whole lot of cat fur off her show quilts. The demonstrator had me transfixed, as she picked up thread, sesame seeds, glitter, and coins, then just rinsed and dried the roller and started all over again. $35 later, I am the proud owner of the set of three magic sticky lint rollers: regular size, purse size, and telescoping-handled super size.
I had a brief moment of buyer’s remorse when I got home and couldn’t get the regular roller to take any cat hair off my husband’s black T-shirt, but I then realized it had a piece of cellophane covering the sticky pink roller surface. Once I removed that, we were both amazed by its performance. I’ve been de-furring the upholstery on my chair in the living room, which tends to be heavily cat-bedecked.
All in all, attending the show was a good time that I don’t have to feel guilty about. I bought less stuff than Kathy, but then, she’s a beginning quilter and has a stash to build! My shopping needs to take the form of facilitating the use of the stash, not necessarily adding to it. I think I did OK on that front here.
Whoa…
I woke up this morning with kind of an itch in my cerebral cortex. Something about that crazy Alexander Henry bird fabric.
What about it?
It reminds me of something…
perhaps something it could coordinate with…
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(Wait for it…)
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As Ted Theodore Logan would say:
I’ll have to play around with some cutaway applique to allow some of the birds to overlap onto the pieced Convergence area. I guess I now know what I’ll use that craft size Dream Wool batt for, to audition it for use in “Ruby Wedding.” Boy, talk about killing two birds with one stone!
Oops. I shouldn’t talk like that around the fabric.
My Shop Hop in Review
My Shop Hop haul
I managed four shops yesterday afternoon, starting as planned with The Quilter’s Palette. Short work was made of my gift certificate, as they indeed had, as hoped, the queen size Dream Wool batting I wanted for “Ruby Wedding.” I also picked up some gorgeous batiks in green, purple, and blue for a future curved piecing project I’ve been mulling over for a while, a spool of Aurifil for piecing, and a yard and a half of that crazy huge brightly-colored bird print from (who else?) Alexander Henry. No, I do not know what I’m going to do with it, but I knew for certain I’d regret it if I didn’t buy it, since fabrics like that don’t get very wide distribution, and the selvedge says 2007. As I commented to my mom, how do those designers know exactly how to push my buttons?
From there, we went to Ladyfingers, where I found a Lonni Rossi fabric from several years ago in the bargain corner for $3.95/yd. That’s a great price under any circumstances; it’s a fantastic price when you’re going to need nine yards to make a back for “Taupe Winding Ways.” I did the math in the shop: that particular sweetheart is going to be 96″ x 108″ with that darn border, which makes it officially the biggest quilt I’ve ever made. Good thing I’ll be warming up with “Ruby Wedding” before I get to that one. But now it has a back, at least. I also picked up the “craft size” of Dream Wool so I can play with it before committing “Ruby Wedding” to it.
After a lovely lunch, I dropped my mom back off at her car and continued home, making a slight detour to Denver, PA to Burkholder’s. Considering it’s long been a favorite shop of mine, it had been several months since I’d been there; I’d heard rumblings that the business was changing hands and that inventory was low during the transition. I am pleased to announce that Burkholder’s is well on its way back, with a wide selection of gorgeous fabric, batting, books, patterns, and notions. Classes are being offered again as well. I bought a yard of a very unusual fabric that didn’t make it into the picture, as it had apparently fallen out of the bag in my trunk; I’ll have to show it later.
I almost didn’t go to Sauder’s, because it was already 4:25 when I left Burkholder’s and they close at 5 on Wednesdays. I never want to be the customer keeping everyone late unless I know I’ll be making a significant investment there, but I was looking for the blue chalk pounce powder to use with stencils (recommended by Pam Clarke in her Quilting with Machines classes) and everyone else either didn’t carry it or was out of it. As it happened, when I blew in the door at 4:52 (!), Sauder’s doesn’t carry it either, so I got out relatively cheaply with a discounted copy of American Patchwork & Quilting and some dark-chocolate-covered cranberries — an excellent reason to patronize a quilt fabric shop that also stocks bulk foods. I’ll have to keep my eyes peeled for the pounce chalk at Quilt Fest of New Jersey next weekend.
All told, I bought 15.5 yards of top-quality quilting cotton, 2 wool batts, a magazine, a big spool of thread, and some chocolate, and only spent $71 out of pocket (thanks to the gift certificate.) Nothing bad about that.
And when I got home, guess what the nice UPS man had brought me?
Superior Threads shipment: like Christmas!
I only placed this order Sunday night; Superior Threads is in Utah, and I got this Wednesday! Talk about service. Not that I expect anything less from Superior; ever since I heard Bob Purcell give his “Threadology” talk at the Ricky Tims Super Seminar in 2007, I have had a new respect for their products and been a very loyal customer. They are a very service-based company, constantly soliciting comments and making improvements to be as responsive to quilters’ needs as possible. Their site is a treasure trove of (free!) information, tutorials, tips, and ideas; their email newsletter is excellent, and Bob, his wife Heather (AKA “Mother Superior”) and the rest of the staff run a wonderful, helpful, ethical business that I can feel proud to support while buying their unparalleled threads. Superior is currently running a shipping sale ($3.95 flat rate!) for the month of February, so my plan to order one single cone of thread kind of mushroomed. I got two cones of Bottom Line, the light blue I needed to finish “Window on Whimsy” and a taupe to use in the bobbin of both “Ruby Wedding” and “Taupe Winding Ways.” I also got a spool of dark gray-blue King Tut to use in the blue areas of “Ruby Wedding” and some purple glow-in-the-dark thread (!!!) for quilting a Halloween Attic Windows wall hanging my mom made, and color cards for King Tut and Brytes. As if that wasn’t enough, Superior has a “Try Me!” feature for most of their threads; you get a half-price spool of top-quality thread, but they pick the color. I’m trying Perfect Quilter, MasterPiece, SunBurst, and three colors of Brytes — and they’re all colors I’d use! I definitely see some quilting fun in my immediate future.
Considering I’ve been talking about stash reduction, yesterday’s exploits can certainly seem like “The Lost Weekend.” However, I mainly bought batting, thread, and fabric with a purpose: not so much expanding the stash, but procuring items I need to complete projects I’m currently or soon-to-be working on. Plus, I hadn’t set foot in a quilt shop in absolute ages — possibly since before Christmas! I need to meditate on that, but I believe that’s accurate. And no mail-order, either. I have been very restrained and well-behaved in 2010, so I earned this. I just need to make sure it’s not the thin edge of the wedge as we enter quilt show season.
After work: to the studio!!!
Hooray for Shop Hops!
Even though I’m trying to continue a “fabric diet,” since I have way too much fabric as it is, I’m planning a mini shop hop for tomorrow when I’m off work. I do not intend to purchase fabric, (unless of course it’s absolutely irresistable and non-negotiable, or on sale!) but I’m on the lookout for some batting and some threads.
Every year, my mom and I go on the Eastern Pennsylvania Quilt Shop Hop, which sends us to 12 shops. Participants buy a “passport” for $5 at any participating shop, which comes with a block kit and coupons for return trips after the shop hop ends. If you get your passport stamped at each of the 12 participating shops and turn it in at the final one, you are entered into a drawing for some fairly fabulous prizes, including a sewing machine, a $1000 shopping spree, and a hand quilted queen size quilt. Even if you don’t make it to all the shops, there are door prizes, refreshments, and special sales, as well as different block kits at each shop for a block using that year’s selected shop hop fabrics. A highlight for me is always seeing the different quilts each shop makes with the same blocks; I take pictures at each shop and basically have a textbook on different ways to set sampler blocks. Plus, it’s an excuse for me to spend time with my mom, running around to a bunch of shops and having a ball.
2009 Shop Hop Quilt, Endless Mountains Quiltworks
We never would have found out about the town of Tunkhannock, PA, had not the excellent shop there, Endless Mountains Quiltworks, been on the hop. Every year I look forward not only to seeing owner Jeannette’s lovely shop, but also seeing the gorgeous fall colors and spectacularly maintained Victorian architecture of the town — and lunch at the delightful Patsel’s restaurant in Clark’s Summit afterward! We now also attend the annual Airing of the Quilts there the first Saturday in October, which has grown to encompass not only the original community outdoor quilt exhibit but also an indoor guild show, a one-woman show by a local quilter at the Catholic church, quilt-related performances at the local Dietrich Theater, and a trolley ride.
The Airing of the Quilts
Shop hopping on an unofficial, casual basis is always a fun thing to do with friends. Rhonda, Diane and I hit several of the southern Pennsylvania / northern Maryland shops on a quilting weekend in August, including Needle & Thread in Gettysburg, Sisto’s and Needles & Pins in Frederick, Patches in Mt. Airy, and Seminole Sampler in Catonsville. It’s particularly exciting to have a specific project to collect fabrics and supplies for as you go from shop to shop, and to have friends along to help with the decision-making process.
Tomorrow, my primary destination is The Quilter’s Palette in Fleetwood so I can use my gift certificate prize from “Kyoto Ink,” then I’ll go over to Ladyfingers in Oley and Wooden Bridge Drygoods in Kutztown. If time allows, I’ll swing by Sauder’s and/or Burkholder’s in Denver, PA on my way home. Hopefully, among all those shops, I’ll be able to find the wool batting I’d like to use in “Ruby Wedding.” It’s a great big quilt, 90″ square, and several of the wool battings I’ve been able to find described online are only 90-93″ wide, so if I can’t find something at least 96″ wide, I’ll have to rethink using wool. I’ve been wanting to use wool for a while based on learning Diane Gaudynski has switched to it exclusively. Supposedly it creates a lot more loft than cotton while being much easier to machine quilt with than polyester. On one hand, I’m hesitant to use an unknown product on a quilt of this importance; on the other hand, if the results are as fabulous as reported, I’d hate to pass them by. I know I should try it out on a smaller/lesser quilt first, and perhaps I will, but ultimately, wool deserves to be slept under. I’ll have to see if I can find an unfinished quilt top that needs to be quilted fairly simply. I might have one or two of those lying around somewhere.
But back to shop hops as a concept: quilting is such a tactile pursuit that I can’t entirely embrace online shopping. I need to pet the fabric before I buy it, and I can only do that in person. Besides, I love quilt shops and want to do what I can to support and celebrate their continued existence. The recession has not been kind to small businesses; several shops I know and once frequented have closed in the last two years. The following statistics were passed along to me by a guild friend:
The percentage of the money you spend that stays in the local community if you shop at:
- a local quilt shop: 68%
- a big national chain: 43%
- an internet retailer: 0%
There are fewer shops local to me than there used to be, and no one shop can carry everything each local quilter needs, let alone everything we might want to see. So rather than turning to the internet or catalogs, I’m going on a little shop hop. Especially after having been so recently cooped up due to snow, it may be just what the doctor ordered.
Hooray for Retreats!
(I’m not going to spend a lot of time on this topic, but suffice to say that ever since Boing Boing pointed me toward Gretchen Rubin’s “The Happiness Project”, I’ve thought about making happiness, my own and that of my family, friends, and coworkers, the subject of my Lenten efforts for this year. Quilting makes me happy, but I’ve spent too much time here already talking about the anxiety- and guilt-ridden aspects of it. Without turning into Pollyanna, I wanted to make sure I also made some unmitigatedly optimistic posts here. The subject for the first one presented itself immediately.)
Ruby Wedding top: FINISHED!!! 2/20/10
I’m back from my EGA retreat; I had a great time, as always. Retreats are an amazingly productive experience for me because it’s such a completely supportive environment to work in. I don’t have children, and I’m frequently home by myself, so some would wonder why on earth I would pay money to have to pack my clothes and all my supplies, hoping I didn’t accidentally leave anything crucial at home 45 minutes away, to sleep on a strange bed and sit in a room for a weekend, doing exactly the same hobbies that I could have done at home for free. Yet at least three times a year, I do exactly that. Here’s why:
1) Focus: Most people can certainly understand why women with children living at home like coming to the occasional retreat; it’s basically a vacation from the normal demands of a family, where one can concentrate on pursuing hobbies that one doesn’t always have time for. But what about the rest of us? Why would we want to work on a folding table under fluorescent lights when we have perfectly good studios at home? For me, it comes down to focus. Even if there are no other humans making demands on my time, when I’m in my own home, the house itself pulls at me. I should be doing laundry, or organizing the mail, or sweeping the kitchen floor. Even if I manage to resist the siren call of housework (which I somehow find the fortitude to do on a far-too-regular basis) there are all the alternate distractions: books, magazines, TV, the phone, the internet, dozens of little pastimes that seem innocuous one by one but can collectively whittle down a full open day of opportunity into a few frantic minutes. At retreat, I’m wearing blinders. All I have is what I brought with me, and despite the welcome and inevitable socializing, eating, and show-and-tell, I can concentrate on my work to the exclusion of everything else.
2) Inspiration: The best thing about retreat is that it places me in a roomful of people who get it. We may not all be friends; in some cases we’ve never even met, but we share a common bond in that we all find quilting or needlework or rubber stamping or what have you to be important enough to our senses of self that we’re taking an entire weekend out of our busy lives to devote to it. Being in that sort of environment is different from any other aspect of my life; I imagine it to be analogous to an immigrant’s gathering with others who hail from the same country. Here are people who share my culture and speak my language, and I don’t have to explain my points of reference. Just breathing the air at retreat seems to ignite a passion for my hobbies, because I get to see the enthusiasm that others bring to it and the beautiful things they create.
3) Cooperation: Having other people near me who are interested in what I’m doing creates some accountability to actually do it. (This is also, in part, why I’m a member of guilds and why I write this blog.) Having company and entertainment also helps me get through the tedious and awkward parts that I might use as an excuse to go downstairs and get sidetracked if I encountered them at home. Fellow retreat-goers are also a great sounding board when I run into trouble or just encounter a conundrum in a project — in fact, they’ll frequently weigh in whether I want them to or not! Seriously, the best way to get at least three-quarters of the attendees at a quilt retreat to surround you is to put a set of blocks up on a design wall, stand back with your arms crossed, and stare. The value of that many sets of eyes when trying to get a set of scrap blocks properly arranged is absolutely beyond measure.
As shown at the top of the post, I brought along “Ruby Wedding” and spent the first several hours I was at the retreat completing the applique. It’s exhilarating and gratifying to have that huge top finished, but I’m a little terrified to quilt it. More on that later. I also worked toward finishing a cross stitch project I had worked on at least 5-6 years ago. I had cross stitched and beaded a set of Nativity figures designed by Mill Hill and had planned to finish them as stuffed stand-up figures I could display on my mantel at Christmastime, but then left them languishing in a ziploc bag in the basement. This weekend, I assembled and stuffed them.
Cross Stitch Nativity
I only got the twisted cording trim attached to the Holy Family figure; I still have eight figures to go. Now that I’ve finished the applique on “Ruby Wedding,” this may need to be my handwork project until they’re complete. As I said in the title, Hooray for Retreats!
Progress Report 2/18/10
As ridiculous amounts of snow continue to hamper my normal going-places lifestyle, I’m trying to make the most of the situation by getting some quilting in. Not only did I finish all the border half-blocks for “Taupe Winding Ways,” thus finishing the piecing for that quilt nearly five years after I started it, but I also assembled the upper half of the quilt top:
TWW w/ border
It’s very gratifying to see that first of all, it really does look as good as I had initially imagined way back when, and secondly, that my curved piecing skills were pretty solid from the earliest blocks. I was concerned that there would be an obvious quality gradient from the first blocks to the most recent ones, but while I definitely got faster and more consistent with experience, I was enough of a perfectionist with this project all along that the differences aren’t obvious.
I’ve also been working on the applique to finish the border corners on my parents’ “Ruby Wedding” quilt. Trying to do decent-looking hand applique on a queen-size quilt top is not particularly pleasant. I’m holding myself to the same standards of stitch size and invisibility while trying to maneuver this giant weighty bulk that doesn’t let me keep the left-hand grasp where I want it. I learned hand applique largely from the Piece o’Cake DVD, so I really emphasize the position of my left thumb as the determinant of how long my stitches are and where they come out. I should probably ask around among the hand applique types at guild to see if there’s a better way to manage a situation where your background is HUGE. But I finished the third corner the other night while watching “The Cutting Edge” in lieu of the actual Olympic coverage. (Don’t judge me. I love that movie, cheesy ’80s soundtrack and all. ”Toe pick!”)
RW corner
This weekend I am attending my Embroiderers’ Guild annual retreat, where I started the hand applique for this quilt last year. Perhaps in the interests of symmetry I’ll bring it along to finish; perhaps in the interests of not lugging that beast around with me, I won’t. We’ll see.
I have also sent out “Kyoto Ink” and “Blue Butterfly Day” to Quilt Fest of New Jersey. Having had the experience of mailing out “Watching the Wheels” to Quilt Odyssey last summer, I was a little more prepared for the mailing checklist, but I still wound up sewing the additional name/ address/ phone number label onto “Blue Butterfly Day” while sitting in a booth at the Maple Donuts next to the UPS store. I took the quilts to the office (where there are no cats) and went through nearly a full roll of Scotch lint roller adhesive things removing cat hair before bagging the quilts up to send; this experience had me Googling “sphynx cat rescues.”
I always panic when I have to mail a quilt, but I know it’s an unavoidable aspect of showing quilts, unless I want to become some sort of manic quilt chauffeur. UPS lets me virtually stalk the quilts’ progress through the online tracking, but there’s always the possibility that something devastating could happen. I have to remind myself that, first of all, the quilts are just things. They are things that I made with my hands and I’m therefore inordinately proud of them, but they are just things. If they were lost, stolen, or destroyed, I would be sad, but I would persevere. It is worth the risk in order to be able to display them in shows. I have enjoyed attending quilt shows for years, and have certainly benefitted from the willingness of quilters from all over the world to let me view their work. It’s my turn to take part and enjoy both the compliments and the criticism, and if that means I have to spend a few days with my heart in my throat while the quilts are in transit and out of my control, so be it.
Today is my first day since Feb. 5 driving my car! We got it out yesterday afternoon (then got it stuck again yesterday evening) but I am now once again a member of the driving population and mistress of my own comings and goings. At least the last time I was stranded carless due to snow, I was living in a major city with subways; this was a whole different animal (probably a yeti.) So I can definitely, and gratefully, attend my quilt guild meeting tonight without having to impose on anyone. Hooray.
